Cultural oddities
| Drinking age | To buy the stuff - 18. Which is why you will often find students bemoaning US drinking laws.
To drink it in a restaurant - owners' discretion, though normally around 14.
Drinking at home - 5.
Small note: keg parties do not exist. It would be very difficult to find a keg outside a pub cellar. We just make do with normal bottles and cans. The first time someone on US tv/film mentioned a keg, most of us went 'wheh?'. Oh, and it's illegal to drink on London public transport from 1st June 2008. |
| Smoking | Used to be 16. 18 from 1st October 2007. Banned on all public premises - workplaces, cabs, pubs, restaurants, stations, theatre, you name it. |
| Pubs | Public Bars. 'Bar' and 'Pub' come from the same phrase. Generally less tvs in them than American ones, and a different atmosphere. Wide variation of types. See here for general ramblings. |
| Sex | Legal age is 16. Got it? For either sex or sexuality. However, many ignore this and it's quite normal to have lost your virginity before then - teenagers do have sex drives. Britain has the highest rate of underage and teenage pregnancies in Europe, so that tells you something, and the youngest recorded is 12. However, you can't buy/view/read porn until you're 18, theoretically. |
| Drugs | Mostly illegal, in classes of A, B, C, etc. Class A are the ones that carry the stiffest sentences and are normally regarded as the most harmful. Crack, heroin, etc. Check here for more.
On Cannabis : The law for this is completely strange and inconsistent. Constant debate on whether it should be legalised or not. |
| Driving | Not until you're 17, mate. And you have to pass a theory test before taking your practical test. The theory test involves answering a load of multiple choice questions on the highway code - which you have to get at least 85% in - then taking a hazard perception test. For more info, go to the DVLA. Oh, and most UK cars have gears - that is, stick shift. Only a very small percentage of the cars sold have auto change. |
| Air-conditioning | not in private homes. Public places - offices, hotels, museums, hospitals, etc, sure, just never in somewhere people live. |
| Cheers | do not underestimate how many times brits can use this in a conversation. Entire conversations can be consist of nothing but 'cheers' if it's a transaction, since it functions as 'thankyou', 'general acknowledgement of presence', 'hello', and 'goodbye'.
passenger, handing over money : cheers
bus driver, taking money : cheers
passenger, taking ticket : cheers
bus driver, in acknowledgement : cheers |
| Politeness | it's ingrained and reflex. do not confuse with niceness. It's common for politeness to increase the more pissed off and sarcastic someone gets. (basically, if their expression stays fixed and the tone of voice stays level but gets considerably cooler, beware) We'll even apologise automatically if someone else barges into us. However, we will get a tad peeved if someone isn't polite back. The one we're most sensitive about is 'excuse/scuse me', since saying it means you've at least acknowledged that this is at the very least an intrusion and your behaviour might be construed as rude. You'll know we're peeved if you get a 'do you mind?' in an aggrieved tone in response to your behaviour. (not to be confused with those moments when someone uses it to butt into a conversation or raise one more bloody niggling point in a meeting) |
| Sarcasm | This is required by law as a means of communication. We master it in the womb and our use of it only increases in the presence of those who don;t understand it. Also see 'understatement'. |
| Understatement | Utterly, utterly necessary to understand when being given orders, praise, etc. The more understated the phrase, combined with sarcasm or a cheery tone, should warn you that all hell is about to break loose. Anyone trying to shout about it means that the situation isn't that important. 'Not bad' is the highest praise. 'In a spot of bother' means 'please break out the SAS, we're up shit creek, there is no bloody boat, and the tsunami is coming.' |
| Zed! | Not Zee! Say it with me now! |
| Mockney | Name for a type of speech. Specifically, upper class boy or well-brought-up middle class boys trying to speak with a cockney/London accent to make themselves sound more street or harder. Prime examples - Damon from Blur, Guy Ritchie (married to Madonna, director of the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch films) |
| Policing | We do not call in Scotland Yard for every murder. AND OUR COPPERS DO NOT CARRY GUNS. Please, for the love of utterly fabulous transvestite crack squadrons, remember that most coppers will never handle a gun in their entire career unless they're taking it off someone. The only ones that get any sort of training in how to use them are the specialist squads, like the anti-terrorists, or the snipers. |
| Bed coverings | In the UK we mostly use duvets, also known as quilts, old name for them was eiderdowns. Big feather-stuffed things, different weights (known as tog) for winter and summer. They appear to be very different from what Americans call quilts, as there's no special designs, just larger versions of pillowcases for their covers. The only places I've seen sheets and blankets in the last decade are hotels, and they're getting slowly phased out, as duvets make making the bed much faster and washing much easier. Even my grandmothers have them. |
| Confessions Of... | set of films made in the 70s, starring Robin Askwith as Timothy Lea in a series of different jobs, starting with 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner'. Bawdy and smutty. |
| Carry On films | Set of films that started in the 60s in black and white. Mostly using the same cast. Smutty, silly, very dated in attitude and we're raised on them. Innuendo by the bucketload, plus lots of leering at big-chested young women by all and sundry, preferably dirty old men, often represented by Sid James. Older women were battleaxes to be scared of. At the same time, the men were to some extent frightened of sex, even if they desperately fancied someone (unless they were Sid James) See, the thing about smut is that we can be (or used to be) horrifically embarassed by sex. So we made jokes about it. We couldn't say it, so we used innuendo. Our innuendo antennae are so highly tuned that it's not true as a result of this. |
| Seaside Postcards | Smutty cartoon postcards sold at seaside venues such as Blackpool and Brighton. Examples |
| Pantomime | er. Almost impossible to explain. Highly respected and revered theatrical christmas tradition of putting on a production of a fairytale or similar, eg Cinderella or Peter Pan. The most profitable part of most rural theatre's year. Fine, you may think. Except the Principal Boy (if lead role is a bloke) is almost always played by a very pretty girl in a costume that shows off her legs. (this is changing, I'll admit) There is audience participation, singing when someone on stage pulls down the songsheet, small children being dragged onto stage at some point, and topical bad puns. There is also what we call the 'Dame' role, played by an older man in drag. And C and D-list celebrities. It's suitable children's entertainment and it's *fun*. Hoi, don't run away that fast.... |
| Morris Dancing | men dressed in white with hankies, ribbons, sticks and bells performing an ancient form of folk dancing during summer, though costumes vary depending on the area you view it in. Cider or scrumpy is often involved. We prefer not to talk about it in polite society. |
| Sweeney Todd | Okay, if you've heard of the operetta The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, you might have some inkling about this. Basically, Sweeney Todd is a story about a barber and his lover who ran the pie shop next door on Fleet Street in London. He had the occasional habit of killing his customers, and the parts went into his lover's pies. Due to this, Sweeney Todd's is a *very* popular name for modern-day barber's and pie shops. Yes, we're sick. |
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